word, PDF, & JPEG

lostsoul62 · #1 07-11-2012, 06:49 PM

I'm buying a scanner but don't really understand the difference in Word, PDF, and JPEF. Or all the converters from one to the other. I know this isn't a short answer but do you know any articles, or books that can educate me?

ngmp · #2 07-12-2012, 07:42 AM

Word is a word processor designed to create letters, reports, book etc. In Word you type in the letters/words/equations/underline things/change fonts etc. and save a copy of your work onto disk in a format like (.docx) which can be further edited later on. You can scan a document, but a scanner (to my knowledge) essentially photographs a page of a document and gives you an image of the page and you save this image to disk with a format like JPEG. Software exists to convert the image to a document called OCR (optical character recognition) but the scanner will leave you with a readable image.

PDF (portable document format) is a system of transporting documents (created in say Word) so that it is pretty much readable by anyone anyway. It is also, imo, the industry standard way of sending documents around the world. Typically PDF files are not editable (they are but the bulk of the time they are just for reading) and that’s why people like them as it stops changes being made etc. Usually the final document so to speak.

If you create a Word document and want to send it to another person who does not have Word, you might choose to convert the document to a PDF which most people can read but most can’t edit.

JPEG (I assume) is a picture format (bit like Word creates a .doc/.docx format file) but reserved purely for images. There are plenty of formats around like BMP, TIF, PNG etc each have their own merits. If you want to scan a picture and send it as an email attachment then JPEG will usually suffice. If you're writing a book and require high quality resolution images to be inserted into a Word document for instance, you'd probably choose TIF. People have their own favourites etc.

There are no rights or wrongs. Just be sure that the person you are sending your document/image etc to can open and read/view it. Can’t really go wrong with Word/PDF/JPEGs for most uses tbh

lostsoul62 · #3 07-12-2012, 07:51 AM

Thanks for the info. After more studying and your info I think I understand. Thanks again.

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